


one morning.

by miloron (ocoa)



Series: Canvas [3]
Category: NU'EST
Genre: Breaking down, F/M, Unhealthy Friendships, breaking friendships, breaking up, codependent friendships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 13:18:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17982044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ocoa/pseuds/miloron
Summary: Minhyun doesn't know how one change could affect him as much as it does.





	one morning.

Minhyun doesn’t know when Jonghyun stops being there.

 

It’s like suddenly, he’s alone when he’s not with Minkyung. Suddenly, the house feels empty, like a shadow of itself, suddenly a bit colder and smelling like an afterthought. Once upon a time it smelled like the food that Jonghyun would cook from the recipes Aron sent him over text. Now it just smells… weird. Empty. Wrong? Different? He doesn’t know.

 

There used to be a time that Jonghyun lived by a schedule. He was home by 8, read in his room, sometimes woke up at 1AM making hot water for his instant coffee. Every Tuesday and Thursday he cooked dinner because that’s the day the two of them came back early. Sometimes Minhyun would lie on the couch and sketch the way his shoulders were hunched over the stove as he spoke to Aron on the phone, wondered how to make sound transfer into a visual stimulus so he could capture the small hiccupping laughter he would sometimes get when Aron made another terrible joke.

 

Those days were good, fun, when Jonghyun finished cooking most of the meal he would turn to Minhyun and ask him if they wanted to talk. Minhyun really missed his older brother figure so of course he would say yes and stand to get the phone.

 

It was nice, he thought, and he never once thought that someday it would stop. He starts to obsessively clean the house until the air smelled like citrus and washed sheets, but it still wouldn’t smell right.

 

Jonghyun tells him he’s going on an exchange in the first semester of their third year. New York, he says, smiling slightly. It’s weird to see it, he realises belatedly that Jonghyun hasn’t smiled this genuinely in a while and he feels guilty. He chokes back the guilt and wonders whether he had been giving excuses for not asking Jonghyun what was wrong.

 

Jonghyun leaves on a Friday night. Minhyun asked if he could see him off or pick him up, but Jonghyun tells him not to.

 

“You should go with Minkyung,” he says. “Friday is date night.”

 

Minkyung asks him if he’s okay. He doesn’t know the answer so he smiles and says yes.

 

* * *

 

Minkyung is special.

 

There’s no denying this. She smiles like the sun and sings like a dream, and when Minhyun sketches the lines of her face he’s sure they’re not good enough. He tells her as much and his heart soars when she pushes him and calls him cheesy.

 

He loves it when her head lies on his thigh, hair splayed out over the sofa, tapping out the lyrics for a new song she was writing for the band she and her friends put together in her freshman year. Sometimes she sings out a few words and asks him if it fit. Her voice would carry through the empty room, cut through the cold clean smell, filter into the wood of his apartment and fill it with light and life. It sounded great, and he tells her so.

 

She would smile at that, and the contours of her face would deepen and indent, before she goes back to the song and starts to hum. Sometimes after she leaves he tries to paint. Sometimes he would get as far as tapping the brush into the paint and approaching the canvas. But he would always stop. He would always freeze, hand hovering above paper, and his throat would constrict.

 

He’s always known that he wasn’t good enough for her. He just never knew when it became this obvious. Watching her smile, forcing his own, makes something gurgle and curdle in his stomach and he starts telling her that he’s busy.

 

His pencils are well worn but he doesn’t use them. His paints were almost out but they didn’t feel right to use.

 

He starts to use markers, uses them for their harsh lines and stark colours, draws out the red and blues and blacks that mix together to form a grotesque image of himself.

 

He’s not good enough, he thinks.

 

He moves the canvas to the side and tries again.

 

_It comes out the same. It always comes out the same._

 

* * *

 

Jonghyun comes back, but not really.

 

Some days he looks at Minhyun.

 

He asks if Minhyun’s feeling alright.

 

“Yeah of course, why wouldn’t I be?” He scoffs, even as the question stabs into his chest and he can’t meet Jonghyun in the eye.

 

Jonghyun says something afterword, words swallowed by his voice that Minhyun can’t catch, but he leaves and Minhyun gasps for breath and can feel his eyes burning.

 

He starts to flunk, making by with just enough to pass. He can’t bring himself to do more. Minghao takes one look at it and gives an awkward smile.

 

“Maybe the instructor just doesn’t like the colour scheme?”

 

Minhyun laughs, “Or maybe I deserve it.”

 

Minghao frowns, “don’t say that. I really like the messy brush strokes, they add a lot to what seems like a calm picture.”

 

They said art reflected the artist.

 

He stares at the orange and reds of the setting sun that shadowed the skyline of the Han River. The rough brush strokes that were too thick or too thin.

 

He feels empty.

 

He doesn’t feel bad. He doesn’t feel good either.  

 

* * *

 

Minkyung calls. He doesn’t pick up.

 

_Did I do something?_

 

He doesn’t answer.

 

_Are you okay?_

 

He presses the button by the side of the phone, watching as the screen blacks out and plunges the room into darkness.

 

* * *

 

Jonghyun and Dongho hang out a lot now. He recognises the tinny sound that comes from Jonghyun’s phone every time the literature student rushes out, and recently the way he holds himself changes. His shoulders straighten and his head lifts, and he actually looks his age.

 

Minhyun watches him leave the house, the door swinging closed with a rush of air that smells pungently of citrus.

 

* * *

 

Nayoung doesn’t look up at him when he sits next to her in their shared business module. In the drone of the professor’s voice, it’s easy to lose himself, so he scribbles the words he catches onto his notes and tries to ignore how hard Nayoung is Not Looking at him.

 

“Minkyung is sad.” She says, so quietly that it almost gets erased by the lecturer, but he catches it, because he knew she would bring Minkyung up sooner or later.

 

“Yeah.” He says.

 

She turns to him, almost as if she was about to fight. But she stops just as fast. She’s quiet, for about fifteen seconds, before she says slowly.

 

“I think you need to think about your relationship. And about yourself.”

 

Nayoung was always good to go to for advice, he remembers.

 

“Yeah.”

 

But he doesn’t want advice. Not yet. Not when he knows he’s been an asshole. Not when he knows every single thing wrong he’s done.

 

Nayoung turns back to her notes, but not without glancing back at him periodically.

 

* * *

 

Jonghyun moves out. Minhyun doesn’t tell him to stay.

 

He breaks up with Minkyung.

 

He sits alone.

 

The first sob is rough and wracks through his body. It beats him over and over and it consumes him from inside out. He lets himself go, gives up. His throat hurts, his chest hurts, his head is in the air from all the heat that gathers northwards.

 

He lets himself fall back onto the bed and close his eyes.

 

His heart continues to beat.

 

The sound rings in his ears in the silence of the room.

**Author's Note:**

> >follow me on twitter @kwaks43!
> 
> I have probably one or two more segments to this. 
> 
> Then I'm probably gonna stop writing on this account, mostly because I don't find as much joy writing Nu'est fanfiction anymore? I'm not sure how to explain. 
> 
> Yeah anyway, once I finish this AU, I'm done. 
> 
> If anyone wants to pick up any of my ideas let me know! My twitter DMs are open. I'll keep most of my fics up unless I feel that they're harmful.


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